Posted
by
Soulskill
on Sunday April 18, 2010 @11:28AM
from the think-of-is-as-encouraging-you-to-find-a-new-hobby dept.

ocean_soul writes "More than three weeks after the release of The Settlers 7, with the controversial 'always on-line' DRM, a lot of people still can't connect to Ubisoft's DRM servers. The forum threads where people can post if they are unable to connect keep growing daily. One reason for the lack of fixes or responses from support seems to be that the people responsible were on vacation during the Easter holiday, despite the promise of 24/7 monitoring of the servers. The moral of this story seems to be that it is a bad idea to buy a game just before a major holiday."
Or perhaps that it's wise to avoid games with such DRM altogether. So far, Ubisoft hasn't shown any sign that they're reconsidering the requirement of a constant connection. They've recently said it's "vital" to the success of their games and promised that their DRM would "evolve and improve" over time.

It's clear they don't really care about addressing the problems people are having today. They have already accepted that there will be issues, and they just plan to react and evolve the DRM, but to never remove it. They're in it for the long haul, and if a few eggs get smashed along the way, they're quite fine with that.

This is because idiots keep buying them. People need to stop buying their PC games, and if they REALLY want to send a message, put their piracy statistics through the roof. Download the game 4 or 5 times. If Ubisoft ever removes the DRM from the game, then show them it's appreciated by buying a copy, and putting a nice spike in their sales graph. All the people at the top ever see are graphs and fancy numbers. Show them it doesn't work through those.

This is what happened with Spore, and EA has since realised that they can't treat customers that way anymore. They are now removing DRM from their games shortly after launch.

its like the 'legolas' of pc games. it caters to a huge gamer demographic ranging from 12 years old to 30 years old. with the hype and cult around the first game, ac 2 was bound to be a success REGARDLESS of what happened.

maybe thats why they chose to debut their shitty drm with ac2 instead of any other game.

Did not work out, it went into the top 10 and went out straightly after 1-2 weeks in every country, in case of AC2 the DRM really hurt the sales, it probably would be in every top 10 list still if it had not such a draconian non working DRM.And btw. the game is fully cracked as someone has posted there is a full server emu!It took ubisoft millions to develop the DRM it took the crackers 4 weeks to write a fully working emulator:-)

Clearly the game was a runaway success, but the DRM was just not strong enough.

It never is.

Or, in case I'm wrong, it almost never is.

So rather than making good games, is the game industry really in the business of inventing and attaching to games the DRM schemes which win the arms race against crackers?

It seems that if you limit your talent pool to paid staff whom you subject to performance reviews, and the cracker army enlist the free time of passionate volunteers, the cracker army may be smaller in terms of wall clock hours, but it has better morale. If Sun Tzu is as correct as he is well known, we should expect the crackers to win, right?

(In terms of human motivation and organization, the crackers work similar to the open source movement, I think)

What worked with music stores and DRM were customers complaining and significantly raising the stores' support costs. After some time this caused many music stores to put pressure on the music labels to remove the DRM, which took some time, but finally the labels agreed.

It won't happen. Any marketing exec can tell you that if a product isn't selling, just keep throwing money towards advertising. Cool factor and peer pressure ("Dude, you don't have Game 3: The Game? What the fuck man, that game rocks!") will keep sales at more-than-acceptable levels.

It's just like Brave New World. So long as the entertainment is good enough, people will remain placated and apathetic.

The people don't even have to play it. They just have to buy it, and the bad reviews or complaints can be buried in Google or compensated for with advertising, paid reviews, astroturfing, etc. It is one of those situations where you can just keep throwing money at it to make it a non-issue.

You're right, but it doesn't change anything. Pirating means someone cracked it and gave it away, so let's get a better lock on the door. whether it's true or whether they infer it doesn't matter.

If everyone stopped buying, playing, and pirating DRM-infested titles for 1 month the industry would shit itself. We sold 0 titles? Oh then they must be downloading. No downloads? No activity on the servers at all? W-T-F? Let's get a new title out there with full-on advertising. No one bought it? W-T-F? OK, maybe let's look at this DRM thing.

Won't happen, most people don't care and it's good enough. But at least be honest - yes, it tells them that, whether they infer it logically or not.

I would say the only real way to send them the message is to litterally send them a message. Don't buy the game, and tell them that you didn't because of the DRM. That way, they can't say "look, that person didn't buy it - he must have pirated it" and they can't say "people aren't buying it - we didn't market it enough" - it's the only way the loss of a sale can have any meaningful impact and can't be attributed to something else.

No, its because there is a culture of piracy surrounding PC gaming. I remember back when I was in college, all my classmates were shocked that I paid for my video games.

I dont judge the people who pirate games, I dont pirate software because I find it to be "unsafe computing" ; its like sticking your cock in a streethooker and saying "OMG how did I get the Herp?" Im just saying that the culture of piracy is what is behind companies like Ubi installing DRM systems.

I don't think this has anything to do with theft. Ironically, if you were to steal a copy of the game (walk into a store, put it up your shirt, walk out), you'd still have the DRM, and as far as Ubisoft's servers are concerned, your copy will be entirely "legitimate".

I think, however, that this topic is largely about copying. I'm not sure how any DRM system could impact actual theft, and I don't see anything in this one that even attempts to address it.

Now, of course, you weren't trying to disingenuously equate copyright infringement with theft, were you? They're not the same thing. Copying something cannot by definition be theft. It can still be illegal, just like murder, rape, and extortion are illegal. But copyright infringement is not equivalent to any of those things either, and to use one of those terms instead of the proper ones because it sounds "more serious" is misunderstanding what theft is at best and deliberately dishonest at worst.

It can still be illegal, just like murder, rape, and extortion are illegal. But copyright infringement is not equivalent to any of those things either, and to use one of those terms instead of the proper ones because it sounds "more serious" is misunderstanding what theft is at best and deliberately dishonest at worst.

I disagree. Ubisoft has been raping their customers for some time now with a DRM scheme that is little short of extortion, and I think it's high time that we murder their sales figures by spending our gaming dollars with companies that don't steal our time.

Not everything that has the same outcome is the same thing. Take, for example, the following two scenarios:

Someone suffers a stuck accelerator, loses control of their vehicle, and strikes someone, killing them:

-Victim is dead.

Someone points a gun at that person and pulls the trigger, killing them:

-Victim is dead.

Yet, despite the same outcome, only one of these acts is a murder. It would be absurd to say they both are, just because the outcome was the same in both cases.

By your means of definition (similarity of outcome), a secondhand sale would also be a theft: the purchaser has the game, and the publisher got no money for the sale. Yet this would seem absurd, at least to me.

Theft requires a physical deprivation. That's the critical point. If someone steals my bicycle, it is theft because they now have it, I did not give them permission to have it (both true of copyright infringement), and I now do not have it (untrue of copyright infringement).

All of those conditions must be met for a theft to occur. To say that the "deprivation" is in not a loss but a lack of gain (a "deprivation" of a hypothetical profit which may or may not have occurred) is to stretch the definition until it screams, and I don't think it at all holds, as it results in an absurdity (secondhand sales also being "theft").

If someone could somehow make a copy of my bike, rather than purchasing one, it may not be something bike manufacturers would like too much. But it wouldn't be a theft.

Stealing is when you take something away from someone. When you copy something, the author still has it. Therefore it's not stealing. That doesn't mean it's not illegal. You can argue that it loses money to the author if you do it; but you can say the same thing about slander/libel/defamation. Surely if someone slanders a competitor, he stands to gain and the competitor to lose. Yet you're not calling it stealing, are you? Why don't you call copyright infringement slander, libel, or even identity theft or e

Yeah, but I generally don't want "pretty good things that run on low hardware specs". There are already plenty of games for folks satisfied with that... Nexuiz for one example. Even a graphics whore or "content tourist" like me had to admit Nexuiz is a blast, after giving it a chance for a whole 5 minutes. It's multi platform and can be compiled locally too. They are probably at the limits of what they can do with that old Quake engine. (You can only sew a limited number of arms on an old octopus)

The American way of doing business is slash-n-burn anything and everything. Why sell one kidney when you can sell two for twice the price? You'll be rich before you die! Air and water? If I make it unbreathable and undrinkable, I could sell it filtered at a 100x markup! Anything to prop up that quarterly report, cinch the bonus, and skip town. No one gives a shit about long term.

Shareholders will see the quarterly report (Looks great on paper!) and spend their imaginary money.

What? As far as I know, Valve has never required a third-party dev to remove their DRM before selling their games on Steam. For example, the Steam version of Bioshock (the first one) kept its SecuROM DRM - even though it didn't have a disc to check.

Do you have any examples? (I don't mean examples of third-party devs voluntarily removing their own DRM for the Steam version without being asked, I mean examples of Valve explicitly telling a third party they had to remove their DRM before they could sell their game on Steam.)

"You get what you pay for", or, "A fool and his money are soon parted"?

I think it's more the story of the fool and his money. Don't buy DRM, people! DRM is a promise that you'll be screwed, later if not sooner. Think hard, then name a half dozen DRM schemes that have lasted for years, and STILL WORK. I'll bet you can't do it. No one supports much of anything after just a couple years. Windows XP was probably the longest lasting support story, and that was what? 7 years?

Think hard, then name a half dozen DRM schemes that have lasted for years, and STILL WORK. I'll bet you can't do it.

I'm *NO* fan of DRM, but I accept your challenge...

-CSS on DVD's has been cracked and anyone who knows to look for any number of apps employing DeCSS can bypass it, but it's enough that commercial apps like Roxio and Nero won't do it, and a search for copying DVDs will yield 1,001 apps that either don't live up to their promises or install malware, so while it's possible, I'll give it half-credit because Joe Sixpack will have to do a decent amount of research to figure out how to do it properly.

-The DRM on WMA has held up pretty well; it had been cracked in the past, but AFAIK the latest incarnations of it are still largely intact. Whether that's a "they did it well" or "no one cares" issue, I can't tell, but the bottom line is that I'm unaware of an app that will unlock a song rented from Napster To Go if I download one today.

-While I've seen rips of iTunes videos leaked on a few torrent trackers, by and large I haven't seen a widely distributed app that will crack the DRM on the videos from iTunes.

-While not technically 'years', the comments on slashdot articles about the PS3 lead me to believe that games for that system are extremely-challenging-at-best to pirate. Is that true?

-iLok seems to be holding up pretty well; a few apps have been cracked, but it's no an app-by-app basis instead of a system-wide crack.

-Torq and Serato both have proprietary hardware that's used to enable all the features of the applications, and I haven't seen cracks for either that enable them to use generic ASIO sound cards.

-This one is pure speculation, but I'm sure that there are extremely high-cost, industry specific applications that are DRM'd and haven't been cracked. I'm sure Boeing doesn't use AutoCAD to design airplanes. I'm sure ConEdison doesn't use off-the-shelf software to regulate electricity output across Manhattan.

*works in aerospace as a CAD/CAM draftsman; can answer authoritatively.

BOEING uses Dassault Systemes Catia V5 R19, as of the time of this posting.

It has been cracked and released on Pirate Bay as of R19 service pack 4.

The crack in question exploits the server based authentication DLL, by replacing it with one that automagically returns "authenticated" for whatever license the local client is requesting. (thus, no authentication server is needed at all.)

The name of the hacked file is called JS0GROUP.DLL

A pirate installation of this sort provides the user with over 1 million dollars worth of CAD/CAM power, in equivalent licensing fees.

(Catia is a modular "I can do just about anything, DAMNIT!" CAD/CAM/PLM package. It has workbenches for doing everything from sheetmetal design, to rapid prototyping, to designing skyscrapers, to designing and diagnosing plumbing/pipe routing, planning infrastructure and space requirements for industrial robots, and even electronics engineering. The pirate dll activates "ALL" workbenches.)

Long story short: The DRM (Licensing server with expensive licenses required.) has been broken, and has been broken for quite some time.

To be fair, that game has very little to do with Steam. Pick up a copy of Team Fortress 2 or Counter-Strike: Source (Valve games, they own and operate Steam) and get back to me if you have any DRM problems.

I've literally *NEVER HEARD* of anybody having Steam DRM issues aside from the general philosophical one with the concept. Literally NOT ONCE have I heard of somebody having a problem with Valve's specific implementation. But again, COD MW2 uses their own DRM.

Me too. I think Valve Corporation is a. not as boneheaded greedy as Ubisoft and b. is more competent technically. Yes, there's just as much potential for abuse, but so far I've not had any grief with Steam at all. Certainly not when compared to the likes of Ubisoft. As always, if you buy into a DRM-laden content-distribution system, expect that at some point your "investment" may become worthless. It's the nature of the beast, and I wish more people would understand that. It's not such a big deal with a vid

This is typical of short-term thinking on the side of management. Here they are thinking really, really short-term. The people that complain already purchased their copy of whatever game they were selling. There is no benefit in providing them with any more service as they won't pay to cover the costs of it, the profit has been made, the game has been sold in most places you can't return digital media once you opened the shrink wrap without a court order practically.

Sympathize or don't. When you don't, don't expect any sympathy in return. Expect decisions like the ones Ubisoft has made.

Your entire position is ridiculous. The consumer shouldn't need to sympathize with a company. It's not a person. It's a thing. Companies exist to provide services. If their services aren't pleasing their existing customers, then they are doing something wrong. What other people do to them doesn't matter in a sympathy context. Even when people do sympathize with things, like faceless companies, they still fuck their customers in the ass. So again I ask why any person should sympathize with a thing.

Customers are people who pay.

Yes, and?

And if they don't pay enough to cover the cost of the trouble they cause, then they're not worthwhile, are they?

I get tired of people wanting things done for them without offering anything in return.

Also, there are clearly two sides to every dispute, even when one side is wrong. These discussions on Slashdot end up being stupid because you guys don't seem to have the imagination to try to understand the reasons behind the decisions you don't like. A few posts in, the groupthink conclusion always turns out to be:

"[Whoever] made [this decision] because they're morons and evil and they hate money and puppies and if th

Dude, I completely agree with you, but choose your battles wisely. All the groupthink is asking for is, if not a DRM-free copy of the game, then at the very least, a well-maintained working service. The latter is not an unreasonable request if you've already paid for the game.

Customers who bought the games for consoles don't seem to be having any problems.

Well that's just lovely then.

I don't play console games, I can't stand the controllers.

But please quit the bullshit that my PC needs to have an active internet connection to run a fucking game! Part of why I even BUY games that are even worth playing as single player is because my network connection is often for crap (no matter what Verizon's CEO wants to tell you) even though I live in a city, and if I want to play a single player game chances are its because my network is flaky or that I'm somewhere witho

They've recently said it's "vital" to the success of their games and promised that their DRM would "evolve and improve" over time.

Improving the DRM won't improve the game itself. A game would have to be pretty damn good to make me pay AT&T $60 per month for the ability to play it on a laptop. I've bought exactly one game published by Ubisoft (Lumines for PSP, a franchise that Ubi has since lost to Disney), and if anyone working at Ubi is reading, I'm not buying any more until your company starts considering laptops without mobile broadband.

The only way to implement secure and effective DRM may be through the use of server handshaking. I understand that. But these publishers really need to understand that not everyone has a connection all of the time. Even when customers do have a connection it can be faulty and thus cause them problems.

Data plans, anyway you look at them, are still luxury. Time after time I check with my friends how much they pay for iPhone per month and for myself I simply can't justify the expenses.

And the laptop gaming is on rise. What is rather obvious as for few years now laptop shipments outnumber that of desktops. It is simple fact that more and more people own a laptop and have no desktop at all.

It takes more than three weeks to organize such things. It also takes more than three weeks of difficulty getting your game to work to justify them. Are people who can't get connected being refused refunds?

Don't file a class action, take them to small claims court. If they can't be bothered to show up, they can just accept the default judgment for the plaintiff. If they do show up, it'll cost them much more than the proper refund would.

All you'll get for a class action is a rich lawyer and a coupon for a glorious $5 off of another non-working game. If a class action suit does get going, opt out and go to small claims anyway.

My guess is that class action law suits require very little effort from 99% of the people involved, they simply have to say that they were in some way harmed and then get to collect their reward. Small claims court means you actually have to work and put effort in even if it's not alot. As well know on Slashdot everyone wants the world to be fixed, so long as somebody else does it.

If any of their games were selling particularly well I'm sure they'd be shouting from the rooftops: "See it works!" But they're not so I imagine its for the par at least. What will be really interesting is the five year outlook, I've already decided to do my part to kill Ubisoft: I will never buy another one of their games, theres always something else to choose.

They are willing to accept lower sales of the game and offer a less desirable product because they consider it preferable to having their games pirated. I'm not sure why you'd think that decision would lead to lots of extra sales of the game. Even a small boost in sales makes this a worthwhile effort for them.

They also don't want pirated PC copies of their game competing against their console sales. Consoles are where the money is, largely be

And what do you mean by a few? Few is a small number. They would need to sell enough copies to offset the cost of implementing the DRM solution and any licensing fees associated with it, and then some. If they've sold only just a "few" copies more than what they normally would have sold, it was a less profitable venture in that regard. Unfortunately I doubt they could accurately predict these numbers. They can create a lot of smoke and mirrors to say, "See, see, if worked!", but they'd be bold faced liars.

Well, FWIW, the system has worked in so far as there is no scene release of AC2 yet. Didn't see that coming; I figured that whatever Ubisoft would do, it'd be trivially cracked in a few days at most. Nope.

From my limited understanding, the DRM really uses challenge/response data that is necessary for playing the game, ie. actual game content in a very abstract form. So simply bypassing the server check or trivially emulating it isn't enough, the game requires the data from Ubisoft to be playable. Consequent

But once the protection has been figured out, future cracks will be faster. When a new DRM is introduced, it does take some time for crackers to figure out how it works and get around it. The more different it is from past DRM, the longer it takes. Thus this DRM, being custom Ubisoft stuff that's never been seen, takes longer than SecuROM or the like.

Ok but one they figure it out, and they have, well then in the future it'll be much faster. While the details will change, the base workings are going to be the same and thus not take so long. In this case it may be even easier as the method used seems to be to just emulate the server.

No matter, it is a losing battle for Ubisoft. They can invest the time and money to make a totally new DRM system for each game if they like, but they'd lose money due to the development expense and it'd still get cracked.

Game companies really need to knock it the fuck off. You can't make an uncrackable game, so stop wasting your money trying. Also all the people pirating are NOT lost sales. The vast majority would simply do without if they couldn't get it for free. Make good games for a reasonable price with nice extras for paying customers (things like achievements) and you'll find that your game sells fine. Pull shit like this and you'll lose sales because people don't want to deal with it. I was planning on getting AC2 and Settlers 7 but both are off my list because of the DRM. There are plenty of other good games out there (too many in fact, I don't have enough time to play all the games I've got) that have non-invasive or no DRM.

I'm not unreasonable, I'll meet publishers half way, I can deal with some DRM so long as it doesn't interfere with my ability to play the game. However shit like this is a no go.

Yep but the problem lies exactly with these people who keep buying the games with this kind of DRM protection. If people stop buying they're practically forced to stop using this kind of protection.But we all know this is never going to happen and people will keep buying their products.

And the problem with the traffic fatality situation is that people get into car accidents, and the problem with heart disease is that hearts are not indestructible. True, but not helpful in terms of finding a solution.

In fairness, it did take a few weeks for a good crack to come out, and I think there are still a few rough edges. The good news is most of that time seems to have been spent creating cracking tools, so the Settlers crack is coming along quite a bit faster.

Of course, maintaining this DRM *after* a 100% working crack is released would be astoundingly, pointlessly stupid. So I'm sure they'll do that.

Well, if it's as successful as this approach by Ubisoft at preventing the game from being cracked, then it also punishes the would-be pirates. DRM on games actually can be used to only prevent pirating while not disrupting the game-play of legitimate buyers. It hasn't been pulled off yet...but it could happen. Of course, the always on-line approach is guaranteed to punish the legitimate buyers.

Music and video DRM, on the other hand, is just pointless. If a human can buy it and listen to/watch it, then a hum

I just had a great experience with Ubisoft DRM a few weeks ago. I decided to replay Farcry 2, which I really didn't play that much when I bought it a year or so ago. I'm military, I move a lot, can't find the stupid booklet with CD key, so being a legitimate customer who BOUGHT the damned game I go on their site and ask for help. Game apparently needs a CD key that activates itself online and requires registration and account creation (which I did create, and logged in with that account...). Their reply summed up is "Send us 5$ + S&H and we'll send you a new CD key. Check/cash/money order will do". My reply was taking 5 minutes to find a 24k cracked.exe file that allowed me to skip through all their BS. That was the last game I buy from Ubisoft.
This new DRM scheme is even worse. For me for example, I deploy, I don't have internet everywhere. Which means I can't play an uncracked version of Settlers 7. I've never even played Settlers, I don't know what it is, nor will I ever get exposed to it because I know of their retarded DRM schemes. I imagine that this will turn away a lot of other paying customers from Ubisoft franchises.
PS: Farcry 2 sucks, no wonder I played it for an hour when I bought it a year ago.

Actually, pirating sends a damn better message than not buying/playing. Pirating says "You made a good game, which I want to play, but something in your system has made me not want to reward you." In most cases, that something is DRM. The other alternatives are usually "price," or something. However, "It's a terrible game" isn't one of the options considered."

If you don't play it at all, the message usually comes out instead as "You made a game that isn't worth my time." Thus, no message about the DRM is sent on an individual basis. Instead, you're commenting on the quality of the game. If you're *lucky,* they'll expend more resources in making a better game.

Hell, I'm usually tempted to download games I've no intentions of playing, simply to bump the numbers.

Actually, pirating sends a damn better message than not buying/playing. Pirating says "You made a good game, which I want to play, but something in your system has made me not want to reward you." In most cases, that something is DRM. The other alternatives are usually "price," or something.

No, it tells them "I'm a cheap bastard, and don't want to pay for your product. Please make the DRM stronger so that I cannot succeed at this."

Well, that's what they hear anyway. It also happens to be true in a lot of cases.

Notice that somewhere along the way with PC purchases that generally you lost your ability to resell your purchase? Just another casualty in the piracy wars. At least I can go into EB Games and buy used Xbox 360 titles, PC titles nope and the PC title section seems to be getting smaller and smaller...

Now more and more x360 games are coming with one time only codes that you need to unlock a significant portion of the game. Forza 3, for example, had a bonus track area and a ton of bonus cars. mass effect 2 had a very effective character locked out by default but was unlocked with a one use code. I would expect that in the near future this trend will accelerate.

I use Game Copy World [gamecopyworld.com], esp on old DRM that requires the CD/DVD to be in the drive all the time. There is simply no reason why we should be tolerating DRM on any media, it would be like requiring a Captain Crunch decoder ring to read a book.

When your DRM requires you to have a working internet connection for no other reason than the DRM, you're doing something wrong. It's supposed to be seamless and unobtrusive, using channels already in use by the game. Soon enough the system requirements will be elevated just to accommodate the DRM. Oh yeah.. that's why safedisk exists.

Remember Doom? How about Quake, Quake 2, and Unreal Tournament? If you've been playing computer-based FPS games for over a decade like I have, you KNOW these games. Why? Is it because they were so freaking wonderful that EVERYONE had to play them? No.... In my mind the popularity of these games was rooted in the fact that they were (for their time) kick-ass games, but primarily their popularity lie in the fact that you could install them on as many computers as you'd like. With one legit (or otherwise) copy

I am not against piracy, I think it's a terrific method to get free shit. However for this situation, using the "Im going to Pirate this game to stop teh 3\/i! DRMers" is an counter-productive move.

If you pirate these games simply 'on principle' software companies will adjust themselves with stronger DRM.

For these games, the publishers are willing to give up a certain portion of their profits in order to change the culture of PC gaming towards the standardization of using Draconian DRM Systems (DDRMS) in their games. Their goal is to make it 'normal' for players to buy games w/ DDRMS.

The most effective methods of fighting this DDRMS from least to highest are:

6. DDoS the DRM servers (I do not condone this action because it is illegal)5. Do not buy the game4. Do not buy the game and evangelize to friends and gamers why THEY should not buy the game3. Buy a non-DRM game2. Download an Open Source video game1. Donate to an Open Source video game.

The most effective methods of HELPING this DDRMS from least to highest are:4. buy the game3. buy the game and tell your friends how awesome the game is2. pirate the game1. Donate money to UbiSoft to help they promote the DDRMS (I expect that other companies are quietly backing UbiSoft here)

Here's the thing. Multiple studies have demonstrated that the most prolific pirates are also the most voracious consumers, purchasing far more material than the average, casual gamer. These companies don't seem to understand that piracy does not correlate to a loss of sales. If anything, as a recent Arstechnica article mentioned, it may *increase* sales as people are able to legitimately sample the product and decide to buy either the current or future releases.

The real problem is that the executives and CEOs of these companies are performing their duties on behalf of the shareholders. The shareholders see people using their company's product for free, and like greedy little children who want to have their cake and eat it too, equate every torrent download with a lost sale. Even if it's not a true correlation, they can't stand the idea of someone using their stuff without adding to their pockets. If the shareholders don't recognize the value that targeted piracy, or even *demos* as the recent article about Crytek demonstrated, can have for a company, then nothing is going to improve, and the CEOs will keep shooting themselves in their foot trying to "stop piracy", all the while punishing their customers in the process.

What we need are more studies conducted by independent third parties to assess the true affects of piracy on sales. And I don't just mean a straight-up numbers analysis. I'm talking about determining the sociological implications of piracy, and its effects on buyers' habits over the long-term. Once these studies are performed we need to educate people about the *actual* conclusions, not some made-up garbage by the RIAA or other entrenched schemers.

Of course since the game has been opened, it can't be returned. It would be interesting to go the Credit Card approach that the item was not substantially as promised and provide the attempts at resolution that have been made.

Execute a chargeback, and then when you're in the clear destroy your copy of the disk.

(Personally then go outside and get some fresh air, but not everyone can do that)

Steam actually adds value (download to any PC anywhere, never need a CD, etc) in compensation for the loss of certain freedoms associated with their DRM system (no resale, etc.)

Nobody elses DRM is adding value.

An example of the value its given me: I purchased Left 4 Dead from Walmart a year or so ago I guess, but when I opened the product, the CD was broken. "Aww crap!".. This stuff happens.. but wait.. its a steam game! No need to go back to the store! Launch steam, enter the product key, latest version downloads with all patches applied, and off I went killing zombies....

If you're talking about VAC-banning then you're just factually incorrect. If not then I'd be interested to know of an example, because I've never heard of somebody's entire Steam account being banned. Phished, perhaps, but not banned.